HISTORY TIP OF THE DAY

The Big Three meet at Yalta, February 4th, 1945

The purpose of the Yalta Conference between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin is to define the shape of the postwar world. The end of the war in Europe is now in sight. American and British troops have just thwarted Germany’s last great offensive at the Battle of the Bulge. In the east, Russian troops have already taken Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia from the Nazis, and are just forty miles from Berlin. But Stalin’s goal is to recover Japanese-occupied Manchuria. When Roosevelt requests that Russia enter the war against Japan, Stalin agrees after demanding FDR’s acquiescence to his designs in Asia.